Kirby Smart: Georgia’s Justin Williams is ‘the kind of alpha you need’ at linebacker

And then Georgia beat Texas twice last season, once in Austin and then again in the SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“Me not choosing Texas was a big thing because I’m from Texas, but there was good competition,” Williams said this week. “We celebrated our win. They did what they had to do, and it’s just good competition. We’re both in the SEC now, and that’s just how it is nowadays.”

If Georgia is to beat Texas again in 2025 — the two teams are scheduled to meet Nov. 15 — Williams will have to be a bigger part of the Georgia defense.

Gone are Smael Mondon and Jalon Walker, the latter of whom haunted Texas in both matchups.

Williams feels he learned a lot from the two NFL-bound linebackers and is ready to show it during his second season in Athens.

“I feel like with Smael, I learned how to be a leader, to play football,” Williams said. “You’re going to mess up, but that’s just about football. I learned to be a great person, not only on the field, but off the field as well.”

As for Walker, Williams learned the importance of being able to do everything. Whether that be to drop into coverage or be a positive influence on your teammates.

“And from J-Walk, I just learned how to be high effort,” Williams said. “J-Walk’s versatility has taught me so much. I just watch his clips every day. I go in there and watch film, and I’m like, dang, I’ve got to mirror that. Let me see this with his hands. Certain things, I learned how to pass rush from Jalon.

“I learned how to just take it all in and just take a deep breath and go play football from both of them.”

Williams isn’t the only linebacker who will step into a bigger role for this Georgia defense, as he’ll pair with fellow sophomore Chris Cole. The two are best friends on and off the field and look to have a similar impact on the Georgia defense like past great linebacker duos.

Both were 5-star prospects for Georgia in the 2024 signing class and will look to emerge as leaders for this Georgia defense.

“He’s probably one of the most positive people I’ve ever been around,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said of Williams. “He inspires hustle, effort. I just love the kid’s energy. He’s never down in the dumps. He competes. I think that he is the kind of alpha you need at the inside linebacker position.”

While Cole earned SEC All-Freshman honors a season ago, Williams spent most of his time working on special teams. That’s normally a positive sign for one’s development, and Williams did play in 12 games as a freshman. He finished with two tackles and a tackle for loss against Clemson.

He’s very clearly only just scratching the surface in terms of what he can be for this Georgia program.

“But man, he competes, and we’re basing our team and our roster and our culture on fire, passion, and energy, and he embodies that,” Smart said. “So we want to embrace that with him.”

Williams is in the process of upping his weight to 225 pounds so he can better dish out punishment from the middle of Georgia’s defense.

The Bulldogs lose a lot of key voices from last year’s defense, which strangled Texas in both matchups.

If Georgia is to do that on a week-by-week basis in 2025, it’ll need Williams to be a reliable contributor for it.

“I just feel like we need to work on that passion and energy and use it, like be more consistent,” Williams said. “And that’s rather for me, from everybody on the football field, from ones to the threes to the twos and stuff like that. We just need to be better, more consistent.”